Google, which is facing an antitrust investigation in Europe over Android, is now reportedly the target of a similar inquiry in the United States.
The FTC is in the early stages of an investigation over whether Google is using Android to hinder competition, according to reports by Bloomberg and Reuters, both of which cite anonymous sources.
The question, similar to that posed by the Europeans, is whether Google is abusing Android’s dominance to favor its own services. Competitors have complained over Google software and services that are pre-installed and bundled in the widely used mobile operating system. (Android has 59 percent of U.S. market share, while Apple’s iOS has 38 percent, according to IDC’s second-quarter numbers.)
Google has no comment, a spokeswoman told SiliconBeat. We were unable to reach the FTC for comment.
If the reports are true, this will be the second time in the past several years that the Federal Trade Commission has scrutinized the Silicon Valley giant’s business practices. In 2013, it dropped an almost two-year investigation into Google search, saying it did not find evidence that the company unfairly favored its services in search results. As we wrote then, Google settled with the FTC by agreeing to certain concessions regarding scraping competitors’ content, patents and online ads. But a report earlier this year claimed that FTC staffers had actually recommended that the agency file an antitrust lawsuit against the company.
Europe in April filed formal antitrust charges against Google over its search practices, and Google released a defiant official rebuttal last month. As Matt O’Brien wrote, the European regulators also announced in April that they would investigate Google’s Android practices. At the time, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Android’s vice president of engineering, said that “in comparison to Apple … there are far fewer Google apps pre-installed on Android phones than Apple apps on iOS devices.”
Photo: A person costumed as the Android operating system mascot stands at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., on April 25, 2013. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
